Gentlemen, Start your DVD Players
Television series on DVD are a guilty pleasure for some, a treasured keepsake for others, and for me a second chance to discover a variety of gems born on the small screen.
Timed around new seasons, big-screen tie-ins, or just ongoing public demand for their favorites, these titles represent some of the best recent arrivals.
Studio: Sony
MSRP: $29.95
Just as star Sarah Jessica Parker's Sex and the City hits the multiplex comes the long-awaited return of her early '80s sitcom. One of the most honest depictions of high school life, Pegs captured all of the aspiration and humiliation of a pack of credible oddballs--who looked like teenagers, not movie stars--some of whom sought to defy the spirit-crushing cliquishness within the halls of Weemawee High. Fresh, sly writing was aided by music from the likes of Devo and The Waitresses, plus guest star Bill Murray as the coolest substitute teacher ever. Extra-curricular activity includes cast and crew interviews and promos for other Sony TV-on-DVD shows.
Saturday Night Live The Complete Third Season
Studio: Universal Studios
MSRP: $59.95
The lineup here is beyond belief. Hosts for the score of 1977-78 episodes included everyone from Hugh Hefner to Steve Martin to a then-beloved O.J. Simpson to sweet little old "Anyone Can Host" contest winner Miskel Spillman. The classic bits, which made comedy history as they were watched by millions of us here on the East Coast as they happened, are too numerous to list, but the musical acts were legendary, with two songs each from Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Elvis Costello … and the first-ever appearance of The Blues Brothers. The long-unseen, season-bridging "Things We Did Last Summer" TV special is included, along with behind-the-scenes footage of John Belushi.
Studio: Fox
MSRP: $49.95
Having unjustly received his "burn notice" (outed from the covert intelligence world), super-spy Michael Westen becomes a hero for hire in picturesque
Studio:
MSRP: $39.95
Whereas the fifth and final season began to show a little fraying at the edges, with silly storylines and extraneous guest stars, the 1973-1974 season is arguably the zenith of the entire run, with classic bits like Felix's fear of flying, his attempt at songwriting, living with a new car in New York City, Oscar gluing a pencil to a bowling ball (it's a lot funnier in context), and of course the duo's stint at Playboy Magazine. Absolutely no special features, which is a real timesaver.
Studio: HBO
MSRP: $59.99
Another unflinching HBO docudrama miniseries, this one based on David McCullough's bestselling biography of one of America's often-overlooked founding fathers, warts (and festering pustules) and all. The eight-hour-plus miniseries owes much to the controlled, utterly uncharming portrayal by star Paul Giammatti, in addition to Laura Linney as his devoted, exceptionally capable wife Abigail, David Morse as war-weary George Washington, Stephen Dillane as a complex Thomas Jefferson, and Tom Wilkinson giving one of the great performances of one of history's greatest characters, Ben Franklin. Rich in period detail and shedding a decidedly unromantic light on the years before, during and after the birth of the
Studio: BBC
MSRP: $59.95
In an approach that has worked for previous sets, this box works around a singular theme instead of a complete season, as the good Doctor battles various underground/underwater foes in a total of 17 episodes from the iconic British science fiction series. Each of the three volumes within is also available separately. Doctor Who: The Sea Devils and Doctor Who and the Silurians star third Doctor Jon Pertwee, a white-haired, hot-tempered gadget-friendly rogue stuck on Earth but determined to save mankind from these bizarre creatures with evil intent. A decade later, the wittier, more naïve and more fallible fifth Doctor Peter Davison confronted a deadly team-up between the Silurians and the Sea Devils, again with the fate of the human race hanging in the balance. All of these discs feature a surprising amount of bonus material, including assorted director/writer/actor commentaries, isolated music tracks, plus appropriately high-tech DVD-ROM content for both Mac and PC.
Studio:
MSRP: $49.95
Despite being one of Paramount/CBS DVD's most requested titles ever, the series starts out a lot more dated than you probably remember, casting hard-boiled, charismatic detective Joe Mannix as a cog in the Intertect corporate machine. Not content to be just another private dick within the vast conglomerate, he perpetually butted heads with his boss (Joseph Campanella), before later going solo. This enjoyable set includes episode introductions, a couple of commentaries, new interviews with Connors and Campanella, plus an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show and a Diagnosis: Murder "sequel" episode showcasing the return of Joe Mannix.
Studio: Warner
MSRP: $19.95
As bizarre and minimalist as the creators' other series in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, Sealab 2021, but a hell of a lot funnier, Dingo pits megalomaniac Killface's evil ambitions against the absurd realities of modern life, from corporate politics to misguided losers and the broad expanse of weirdness in between. This being a new, very different series, I must confess to some disappointment at the utter lack of extras, especially when most other Cartoon Network discs are a party on a five-inch platter, but if you missed this masterpiece of subtlety when it first aired, or when the DVD was released earlier this year, this complete collection of all 13 eleven-minute episodes is an hysterical--and brisk--way to make amends.
Studio: Sony
MSRP: $49.95
The trials of two young urban siblings transplanted to an affluent suburb with their eccentric grandfather make for plenty of angry/funny fish-out-of-water antics. Aaron McGruder's take-no-prisoners comic strip yields another year of the controversial animated half-four sitcom, and this DVD set even packs two episodes too extreme even for Adult Swim, despite their many firm pre-/mid-show disclaimers. Somehow The Boondocks manages to get away with frank social criticism--of current events, pop culture, race relations--that no other series does and yes indeed, all of the profanity has been restored here, so brace yourself. Multiple featurettes explore the production, the content, and the characters, in addition to select commentaries by McGruder.
Studio: Paramount
MSRP: $129.99
I came to think of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as it was originally titled, in Hollywood terms, namely "It's Forrest Gump meets... well, pretty much every important figure in global politics, culture, science and beyond." Perhaps playing off of the scene in Last Crusade where Indy comes face to face with Adolf Hitler, "Young Indy" cast the someday-archaeologist as a witness to--and frequent participant in--all manner of world history, trekking alongside everyone from T.E. Lawrence (he "of Arabia") to Ernest Hemingway to Albert Schweitzer to Pablo Picasso to... I could go on and on, since the show ran for three seasons.
In Volume Three, seven feature-length yarns represent the original one-hour installments reedited for a more movie-like experience. As the three volumes have been assembled in the chronological order of the events they depict, we find Indiana fighting in World War I on a variety of fronts, and later embarking upon his post-war private life. His "adventures" take him to college in Chicago, to Broadway, and all the way out to Hollywood, California, surely a poetic tip of the fedora to his cinematic roots. The formidable supplements in Volume Three present greater insight, but not into the series itself. Instead they delve into the historical events and eras that provide the setting for the series.
If you're a fan, you've probably already picked up Volumes One and Two. Harrison Ford completists must surely own this last box, although the dodgy artistic choice to repackage weekly episodes as cut-and-paste "movies" might discourage some from the significant investment. If it helps, think of it as money spent on an ultimate set of Cliff's Notes, "20th Century History 101." Read more in our complete review of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three.
That's it for now, folks. Tune in next time for more of the Best TV on DVD.
